


A birdcage of flesh.

by LunnVic



Series: IwaOi Horror Week '18 [3]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Blood Drinking, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Body Image, Cannibalism, Car Accidents, Horror, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, IwaOi Horror Week, M/M, Zombie Iwaizumi Hajime
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2018-10-27
Packaged: 2019-08-08 13:18:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16430135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LunnVic/pseuds/LunnVic
Summary: In the exact second before Iwaizumi Hajime died, he heard his voice. Oikawa’s voice.He expected something like “Please, don’t go” or “I’ll love you forever” or those things people used to say when their lover was dying, but Oikawa didn't say anything even remotely similar.“I’ll fix you.”That’s what he said._____Or Iwaizumi Hajime is recovering for a car accident and he feels something's not right with his body.





	A birdcage of flesh.

**Author's Note:**

> What is English.
> 
> This work has no beta so I'm sorry for the mistakes you will surely find!
> 
>  
> 
> _________
> 
> DAY 4: ONE WHO DRINKS THE EARTH
> 
> vampire vs **zombie** / the unstoppable demon king / kaiju / leader of the pack / the thing that lives in the deep / gnarled horns / seven school mysteries / **the cannibal next door** / something in the shadows / **an empty house at the end of the street** / ghosts y’all
> 
> For [Iwaoi Horror Week](https://iwaoi-horror-week.tumblr.com)!

In the exact second before Iwaizumi Hajime died, he heard his voice. Oikawa’s voice.

He expected something like “Please, don’t go” or “I’ll love you forever” or those things people used to say when their lover was dying, but Oikawa didn't say anything even remotely similar.

“I’ll fix you.”

That’s what he said.

 

 

The first thing he heard after that was his mother’s sobs. That made him open his eyes, quick and violent, and the beeps of the machine at his right increased their speed. The hospital room was white and grey, but his parents were a mash-up of colors when they rose to crush him between their arms. He could smell the fragrance of his mother’s perfume, the acid tones of his father’s shaving foam and, over all of that, he noticed the fading scent of Tooru’s… No. Just his scent. The one that came from white skin warmed by the summer sun.

But Tooru’s wasn’t there.

“Mom, why are you crying?” he said, confused. “No, wait. Why am I here?”

They looked at each other. He, however, turned his head to look at the rest of the room. He was connected to an enormous machine, the one constantly beeping, the beating of his heart being monitored on a screen just before him. Hajime only remembered the pain, the yellow and orange lights from the ambulance, and Tooru’s hand on his.

“Can’t you remember?”, she asked in an uneasy tone.

“I’m…”, Hajime started. “I was at the izakaya, and then…”

Silence. His father tried to help him:

“You were hit by a car. Tooru says you were drunk and…”

“I wasn’t drunk,” he almost snarled, shaking his head, starting to feel a little bit dizzy. “We were leaving because I wasn’t having fun, I was… I wasn’t drunk, not yet.”

His mother smiled, raising her hand to caress his arm. Maybe it was the stress, or the medication, or the confusion, but Hajime would have sworn her _coloring_ was a bit off. Her eyes weren’t exactly the same shade of green as before, and his father’s skin wasn’t so clear the last time he had seen him. He knew this because he had inherited the same skin color from him. He blinked one, two, three times, but the real shades didn’t return.

“It’s ok, honey. You’re an adult now; you don’t have to hide…”

“I wasn’t drunk.”

Hit by a car. Suddenly horrified, Hajime tried to move every finger, every muscle, but the whole thing (the thing being: his body) seemed to be in its place. He was even hungry. That was a good sign, right?

“We were thinking about taking you with us back to Miyagi for a little while,” his father smiled, polite. “I’m sure your university professors will understand. After all, you were clinically dead for a few minutes…”

“More than a few,” added his mother. Hajime didn’t like how she had said it, like if it were something to be proud of.

Because, apparently, he had been dead for more than fifteen minutes. Fifteen fucking minutes. He had died in that ambulance. He had died in that ambulance and woke up for no reason at all the moment his body crossed the hospital doors. And her mother’s eyes weren’t the right shade of green.

“No, I’m… I’m fine. I’ll stay here.”

“Are you sure? I don’t think Tooru…”

“What with him?”

His parents smiled, but there was something else in their smiles. Something they didn’t want to say out loud.

“Oh, you know… He’s so clumsy out of the court…”

Yes, he was. Hajime was always after him as if he were his mother. He had to remind him to buy food, to do the laundry, to clean his part of the flat, even to _eat_ , if he was really focused in something (probably watching some volleyball match online). But he was also attentive, sometimes even _too much_ , when Hajime was sick or tired. His parents didn’t know that, though.

“Thanks for the offer,” he finally said, laying his hand over hers. “But I’m fine, really.”

 

 

Tooru had cleaned the whole flat (Hajime’s room included), and only when Hajime’s parents left, closing the door after them, he confessed he wasn’t really cooking anything, that the bubbling pot in the kitchen was pure façade. Hajime actually laughed at this, and Tooru did it too, while ordering some pizza for both of them through his phone.

And, then, silence.

Although not for long.

“You called the ambulance.”

“And then you died on me. Rude.”

Hajime looked at him, his colors also different than before… before his death. However, his eyes seemed brighter, warmer, the soft brown now almost red under the yellow light of their flat and, his skin, paler (purer). He had missed him. He wanted to hold him, but the physical contact between them had disappeared right in the moment they had realized they were no longer children. Or, more exactly, when Hajime had found he wanted to touch him for all the wrong reasons. So Tooru, eventually, stopped looking for it, too.

But they knew. They both knew.

“Why did you tell my parents I was drunk?”

Tooru frowned, lost.

“I… didn’t think you wanted me to tell them…”

“What? Is there anything worse than to think your son almost died because he was _drunk_?”

Tooru looked away, his hand roaming through his hair like he always did when he was nervous. Tooru also bit his bottom lip and now Hajime was the confused one. So there was something worse, after all! He tried to remember, but everything was black and red and yellow and Tooru’s voice saying something he couldn’t exactly recall.

“So it’s true. You don’t remember.”

His voice sounded kind of sad and kind of relieved, too. The mix tensed Hajime’s shoulders. That didn’t make any sense.

“What…?” and then, “What should I remember?”

“Nothing! It’s better like this.”

Tooru shrugged, smiling with a grin so fake it almost hurt. Hajime approached him with a frown and Tooru backed away and that hurt even more because that was wrong at so many levels… Tooru kept the smile.

“What are you hiding?”

“Aren’t you stubborn, Iwa-chan?”

“Stop it.”

His friend opened his mouth to retort again, but he didn’t let him:

“Fucking tell me.”

“We were kissing.”

“What?”

“I told you that you wouldn’t like it!”

Now Tooru was looking at the floor like it was the most fascinating thing in the living-room and Hajime was looking at him the same way. But he was doing it because Tooru was, in fact, fascinating, and not because he wanted to avoid his gaze.

“What…? Why?”

“Well, wouldn’t it be nice if I knew that? You just… did it!”

“ _I_ kissed you?”

Yes, that was worse than being drunk.

“Why do you look so offended? Anyone would want to kiss me! I’m just surprised you took so long!”

Hajime passed his hand through his hair, thinking, thinking. Tooru’s joke attempt didn’t make him feel better, just more confused, because he really had spent years wanting to do it. And now he didn't remember why or how or when he had finally kissed him because he had died right after doing it.

So he just went to the sofa, half sitting half standing on its back, Tooru watching him with worry in his not-so-brown eyes. There was something heavy between them, and Hajime felt it inside his chest, too; and it was made of why’s and how’s. Tooru didn’t wait for him to ask:

“I don’t know why you did it, so I can’t answer that… But while we were at it some guy shouted at us from the other side of the road. It was something nasty, and you…”

“I crossed the road to get him.”

“Yes.”

So Hajime, the calm one of the two, had died because he had wanted to crush some bones for the first time ever. Hit by a car.

The intercome rang.

“That was fast,” whispered Tooru, pressing some buttons to let the pizza guy inside the building.

The silence felt like a third presence while they waited for him to come. Tooru was playing with his phone, tense shoulders and teeth clenched, pretending to be calm.

Hajime felt his own voice falter.

“And what were you doing?”

Tooru looked at him.

“Calling the ambulance…?”

“No, I mean. Did you kiss me back?”

The smile was small. So, so small, Hajime though that it was just part of his imagination. But then Tooru cocked his head and chuckled and said:

“And what did you want me to do? I’ve been in love with you since we were in high school.”

Tooru was an incredible good actor. That’s why when he opened the door he looked so composed, so natural, paying for their pizzas and having a little chit-chat with the guy. Hajime looked at his perfectly styled hair, his long legs, the way he closed the door with his hip…

“What are you looking at? Dinner’s ready!”

“I want to kiss you again.”

“That’s nice.”

“Oikawa…”

He put the pizzas on the kitchen countertop and looked at him from there:

“Okay. And what if you die again?”

Hajime laughed, but his face was serious, so he pursed his lips before answering.

“Do you really think I died because we kissed?”

“There’s a possibility!”

“Shut up and come here.”

“But _what if_ you die?”

“Worth it.”

Tooru blinked. And he blushed, too.

“Well,” he sighed, acting like the prick he was, “I suppose we have to see who’s right.”

And then Tooru was just in front of him and his arms were on his shoulders and he was kissing him. He was kissing him. He was kissing him and of course he didn’t die after it and, God, how glad he was to be alive.

 

 

“So how’s the zombie doing?”

Hajime laughed, stepping aside for Matsukawa and Hanamaki to get inside. Those two freaks were still the best of the friends after all those years, they even went to the same university, and it was close enough to Hajime’s apartment to be able to do this. They were familiar with the flat already, so they went straight to the kitchen, opening their bento boxes and taking the chairs at the other side of the marble countertop.

“For how long are you going to call me that?”

“Until you look human again,” answered Matsukawa with an enormous grin. By his side, Hanamaki rolled his eyes.

“Don’t worry, Iwa, you’re not so different from before.”

He should have laughed, but the comment didn’t sit so well with him. He opened the fridge door, looking for the food Oikawa had left for him (thing that he had been doing since the accident), trying to find the right words to say before turning to face them again. When he finally did, he did it with a smile.

“What do you mean? I feel even better than before.”

Matsukawa raised an eyebrow, poking at his rice with his chopsticks.

“We can see that, man. You’re even taller now!”

“Yes, how did you do that?” added Hanamaki, eyes wide open.

“What? I’m not taller.”

“Yes, you are,” insisted Hanamaki with his mouth full of food. “And your eyes seem clearer, now. Were they always this green? Is it a post-mortem thing?”

“I don’t think that was the word you wanted to use,” interrupted Matsukawa.

Hajime shook his head him with his back to them, seasoning the colorful salad Oikawa had picked for him. He wasn’t watching, but he could almost see them making faces at each other. Maybe they were over twenty years old, but they were still children inside. Hajime felt like that, too.

“You guys are just imagining things,” he finally said, smiling. “My eyes had been green my whole life and I’ve been this tall since… Well, I don’t remember, but you get this feeling because that idiot is always around.”

The idiot that now was something like his boyfriend.

It wasn’t a secret, far from it, because when they went outside they weren’t afraid to hold hands or kiss, but… He didn’t know how to talk about it with Hanamaki and Matsukawa. How did you say something like that? “Ah, yes, Oikawa? My childhood friend? Our former captain? We’re dating now.”

He turned to them, leaving the plate on the countertop.

“Ew, Iwaizumi! What the fuck?”

“Are you… really going to eat that?”

Hajime looked at the salad, confused by the disgusted look of his friends. It was full of the greenest lettuce he had seen in his life and overflowing with fruits, making him think that Oikawa had tried to made a fruit salad but had changed his mind at the last moment.

“What’s wrong with it?” he asked.

Matsukawa pocked the salad with his chopsticks, frowning.

 “Are you gonna eat it like this?”

“Like what?”

“Like… raw.”

Hajime laughed. What the fuck? Hanamaki looked at him with an apprehensive face.

“And what you do want me to do? Microwave it? Really, guys…”

Finally, Matsukawa shrugged and Hanamaki sighed, slowly returning to their laid back attitude. They occasionally looked again at his plate, but didn’t say anything else about it. Well, not exactly.

“So are you going Paleo now?”

At this, Hajime laughed, even if he didn’t actually understand the joke, or what was so wrong about a fucking fruit salad.

 

 

He was taller.

Hajime looked at the tape measure, at the red number just under his finger. They were only three centimeters, nothing to be suspicious of, but Hajime knew better. He let the tape measure fall to the bathroom floor, right next to the rest of his clothes. At the other side, the water of the shower was still running, waiting for him, filling the room with steam and fogging every mirror.

He tried to think logically: maybe he just realized the change now. It wasn’t a difference so hard for him to notice, and maybe Hanamaki was right. Maybe the shock his body suffered when dying resulted in his bones stretching or something like that. He had heard an urban legend about people growing a centimeter every night they slept on the floor instead of on the bed. But he hadn’t been sleeping on the floor and he hadn’t been dead for a long time either. Just a few minutes.

What was the other thing they had said…?

Ah, yes. His eyes. His eyes being a lighter green color. That had drawn his attention, because he had though the exact same when waking up after the surgery and looking for the first time at his mother. What a silly thought.

And yet he walked to the mirror over the sink, cleaned its foggy surface and looked at his reflection.

At first, everything was right.

There it was his sharp jawline, the prominent Adam’s apple, the dark tone of his skin he had grown to like so much. The short black hair that never stayed in place and that one chipped tooth right next to his upper canine. Even his eyes were the same. How could he forget… wait.

He moved closer to the mirror, eyes fixed on its color. Yes, it was green. Undeniably green. But it wasn’t _his_ green. The tone was off, like melted, like mixed with some other shade of green, maybe gray, maybe brown. No. He shivered.

Those eyes weren’t his.

And neither were his eyelashes, too long, too straight, too everything. He stepped back, mouth twitched in a horrified line, his face becoming pale. And then he looked at that chipped tooth again and how can he had forgot that the chipped tooth was the left one. Not that one. No, no that one.

Those weren’t his teeth. That wasn’t his face.

“Hajime?”

All his body flinched at the sound of his name, Tooru gently knocking at the bathroom door. His hands were shaking while opening it and Tooru blinked when the steam hit his face, hot and humid and thick. He looked at him and then at the mirror and then at his trembling hands.

“What is it, love?”

Hajime shivered again.

“Whose body is this?”

Tooru swallowed and got closer, raising his hands to touch him, to cup his face with them. He didn’t seem afraid of him, of his growing madness, of his wrong eyes, his wrong teeth. Hajime noticed then the change in height, more obvious now than ever, and he wondered if he only had realized it now because they had spent more time lying down than standing those last two months.

If he had been so distracted by Tooru’s body that he had forgot how his own looked like.

“It’s okay, Hajime. Look. Everything’s fine.”

Tooru pointed at the mirror and Hajime had to look. In the reflection he could see the contrast of Tooru’s pale hands against his jaw, and his own arms surrounding his waist like it was the only thing keeping him alive. They both looked at Hajime’s face and, suddenly, everything was how it was meant to be. His chipped tooth, the color green. The up and down of his chest, going back bit by bit to its original pace.

Hajime saw in the mirror how Tooru came closer and felt a little kiss on his temple.

“I’m taller,” he said.

“I know, it happened before the accident. With your last fever, I think.”

“I thought that only happened when you’re a kid.”

Tooru was on the edge of telling a joke, but he seemed to change his mind, because he just kissed him again, this time, on the lips. Hajime looked once again in the mirror, checking that each part of his body remained in place. He sighed. Maybe it had been the steam. Maybe the heat of it had made him dizzy. Yes, that made sense. Much more than the This Is Not My Body theory.

“Are you going to take that shower?” asked Tooru.

“Yes, yes. I’m fine now.”

Tooru smiled, passing his fingers through his hair. Hajime closed his eyes at the touch.

“Do you want me to join you?”

“Please.”

 

 

Three in the morning and Hajime couldn’t sleep.

His tongue always ended up touching that one tooth, making sure it stayed in place. Outside, the summer was losing its warmth, and the air that came through the window was on the chilly side, forcing them to stay as close as possible, bodies intertwined and Tooru’s hair tickling his neck. Hajime couldn’t believe they were there, sleeping together, kissing each other whenever they felt like it. He felt so lucky… And to think he’d had _to die_ to have this…

His tongue again against his chipped tooth.

Wasn't it sharper than before? Weren't all his teeth sharper than just a few minutes earlier?

“You’re overthinking.”

Hajime sighed, moving a bit away to look at him. He felt Tooru's fingertips tracing a line down his spine, releasing a shiver that followed his touch. The colors of the night also seemed different, bluer than greyish, but his eyes still had that dark red shadow on them. He liked it. It made him look like a supernatural creature.

“Have Mattsun and Makki been calling you zombie again?”

Hajime chuckled.

“Yes, but I’m not worried about that…”

“Then?”

He cupped Tooru’s face with his hand before kissing him on the lips, feeling his smile against his.

“I don’t know. I feel kind of… trapped, inside.”

_Inside my body_ , he wanted to add, but he didn’t. Tooru looked at him with an extremely serious face, fingers still on his nape.

“Well, I hope you don’t think I’m keeping you…”

“No!” he almost cried. “I didn’t mean it in that way… it’s just…”

Tooru smiled. It was a sincere one.

“Why don’t we go out this weekend?” Tooru suggested. “Maybe we could get some drinks with Mattsun and Makki…”

He was going to say yes, but in the last moment something else came to his mind. Matsukawa had told him about it a few days ago, and Hajime loved a good haunted house. Tooru, not so much, but Hajime was sure he would enjoy it in the end, after all the whining.

“What are you thinking…?”

“Do you remember the empty house at the end of the street?”

Tooru frowned.

“The abandoned one?”

“Not anymore,” he explained. “Some entertainment company bought it a few months ago; they’re turning it into a fake haunted house.”

“I’m glad you put the fake word there or I’d though they were killing people to really haunting it.”

Hajime laughed and Tooru smiled at him, soft. That was the part of Tooru not many people got to see. The caring, loving and attentive side under the façade. The one that always knew what to say to made him feel better.

“Okay, then. If you want to go…”

“Only if you want, too. It’s gonna be scary.”

Tooru sighed again, closing his eyes to go back to sleep.

“But you’d be by my side, Iwa-chan.”

Hajime smiled.

 

 

“Bye, mum.”

“Bye, love.”

He waited for her mother to hang up, as she had the bad habit to forget about it, Hajime having to call the landline just to tell her to press the red button on her smartphone. After a few seconds Hajime giggled and put again the phone against his ear:

“Mum, you didn’t…”

At the other side, a long sob, violent and raw. All his muscled tensed, his whole body suddenly feeling like a birdcage made of flesh. He called her again, but the crying was loud and hysterical and, at the same time, quiet and intimal. Then, his father’s voice, the sound of skin against fabric, a solid embrace.

“C’mon, love.”

“He doesn’t even _sound_ like him anymore.”

Another whimper.

“That’s not… That’s not his voice.”

“I know, dear. I know.”

 

 

Hajime felt lighter, laughing and laughing while Tooru confronted fake ghosts and demons with that defiant look on his face, as if he were to fight them at any time. Tooru’s hand on his and his lips sometimes on his, too. The haunted house at the end of the street resulted to be a piece of art, with an incredible soundtrack (the music flowing from carpets and candlesticks), ridiculous special effects and specialized make up for the actors, the ones that now smiled at them.

Tooru was talking with a girl dressed as a putrid ghost when the guy who had sold them the tickets approached Hajime:

“Did you guys have fun?”

“Yes!” he answered, turning to him. “It was incredible. We’ve only been in haunted houses from amusement parks and this is totally different.”

“Yes, we have more freedom on our own,” smiled the seller, “But I see you guys haven’t taken the Hall of Mirrors extra?”

Hajime nodded.

“My friend is not very fond of creepy mirrors,” he said. “I think he’s afraid of seeing an ugly version of him.”

The man laughed, hard, Tooru suddenly turning to them with a suspicious look in his eyes.

“Are you talking about me?”

“We are talking about a coward. Are you him?”

“If this is about the Hall of Mirrors, you won’t change my mind,” declared Tooru, with his eyebrows high raised. “I read on the website they were antiques from an old house of mirrors at a European funfair… I won’t put a foot on there.”

The eyes of the seller almost glowed at his words, smile broad and enthusiastic.

“You’re right, boy! Maybe the rest of the house is all make up and music, but the Hall has its history. That’s why we charge it separately.”

Hajime looked at Tooru. He seemed so sure, sipping absently from the thermo they had bring with them. Hajime had always wanted to get inside a hall of mirrors, but he also knew Tooru didn’t like them… He had never asked him why, now that he thought of it.

“Well, I’m gonna try it,” announced Hajime, roaming though his pockets to get his wallet. “Tooru, I won’t ask you to come with me if you don’t want to, it’s okay. How much was it?”

Tooru opened his mouth, looking almost betrayed, but he didn’t say anything while Hajime paid his ticket, nor when he gave him a brief kiss on the cheek before opening the door the seller was pointing. He had stolen the thermo from him, too, and he was drinking from it while facing the first set of mirrors.

The hall was meant to be kind of a labyrinth, the newest mirrors standing out above the others for their immaculate frames and reflections. Hajime pushed one of them aside, finding a new corridor behind it, walls and ceiling full of more and more mirrors, their reflections climbing one over the other and creating a kaleidoscope of gold and silver lights on the antique carpets.

Those mirrors were what he had expected to find. His silhouette was deformed in them, twisted, a mash-up of colors of which he couldn’t even recognize their origin. In one of the mirrors he was tall as the moon and skinny as a worm, and in the next one his shoulders were so broad he looked like Ushijima. He laughed. Ah, Tooru would have laughed at that, too. Between the mirrors, the old wallpaper looked back at him, with a warped design that made him felt observed. Once or twice he had to stop and look closer, his heart beating fast because he would have sworn that was an eye. They never were. He started to understand why Tooru hadn’t wanted to come. Now the wallpaper design looked exactly the same as the knot inside his guts, tight and dark and so close to running away.

The next corridor was even worst (it made him felt dizzy), so he turned around to leave. After all, it wasn’t so fun if he was alone. In fact, it had started to be terrifying.

That was the plan, of course. But one of the oldest mirrors _looked at him_ and he stopped dead just right there. He swallowed, trying to understand his own reflection. Because his figure wasn’t distorted, like in the other, it was… He looked at his own arms, his legs, the summer clothes leaving so much skin out. His eyes told him this skin was smooth and healthy, the only thing crashing against it were the enormous scars the accident had left on his legs. Hajime didn’t mind them so much, because these were a proof that he had survived.

But the mirror showed him something else. And not only that one, all of them, exposing raw skin and shades of green and blue and purple and those eerie white eyes. His scars weren’t scars, they were open wounds stitched together with thick sewing thread; swollen flesh turned purple, turned green, turned putrid. His face was, in fact, his face. He recognized himself in that mix of blues and reds more than he had could before in the others mirrors.

His teeth were sharp. His skin was dead. His wounds, bloodless. His eyes, white.

And when he looked at his own body again, the reflection was now real.

“That’s why I didn’t want to come.”

He turned to Tooru, who was looking at him with something like sadness in his gaze.

“Tooru,” he called him, his voice a whimper. “I think… I need help.”

“No,” Tooru shook his head, walking towards him. “You needed help before, now you’re fine. I fixed you.”

Suddenly, Hajime remembered. He remembered the excruciating pain, his lungs filling with blood, the red lights of a car running away from them. Tooru’s screams and other uncanny sound that he couldn’t recognize as his own breathing. Broken bones, torn muscles, dying heart. And Tooru’s voice saying “I’ll fix you.”

He shook his head, lost and revolted, horror-struck by the endless love he was seeing right now in his lover’s eyes.

“I was dead,” Hajime said, shocked. “What did you do to me?”

Matsukawa calling him zombie, his reflection on the bathroom mirror, his mother crying at the sound of his voice.

“Hajime…”

“No! Tell me! I’m… I’m not like this! This is not my body!”

But it was. He had never been so sure of anything in his whole life. That was his body. Blue and green as the death walker he was. Full of stitches sewing his limbs back together. And that patch of skin that wasn’t his, on his legs. His reflection looked at him with those snowy eyes. He was a monster.

“You died on me,” Tooru finally explained, voice soft as a feather. “And it was my fault, because if we hadn’t been kissing that guy wouldn’t have… and you wouldn’t…” And there was a whimper, now, between words. “So I did what it had to be done.”

“You brought me back. How?”

Tooru smiled. Ah, he was beautiful. He was beautiful even with that red tint on his eyes that now made sense. Because Tooru wasn’t human, either. He had brought him back from the death and now he was a fucking zombie.

“That was the easy part,” he answered, calm. “However, your body was completely wrecked. You needed some spare parts…”

“The guy.”

“Yes. I killed him and used his flesh to complete yours. He deserved it, that little shit. I’m glad he served a good purpose, after all. You didn’t deserve to die, but he did.”

_That’s why I’m taller_ , he understood. _These are not entirely my legs._

Hajime felt his chest tighten. Ah, he wanted to cry. He wanted to cry but this dead body didn’t have tears. The sob came out anyway, scratching his throat in its way out. Tooru had made of him an abomination. A monstrosity.

And he didn’t know the worst yet.

“But…”

“Yes, love?”

“If I’m dead, what I’ve been eating?”

“Look at your drink.”

Terrified, he looked at the thermo in his hand. Slowly, slowly, he opened it, the thick liquid inside redder than anything he had seen in his life. He screamed, full of rage and pain and desperation and threw the thermo against the mirror, staining its surface with red, red, red. He was eating corpses. No. Tooru had made him eat corpses. No wonder Matsukawa and Hanamaki had looked like that at his… _Oh_. The memory trembled inside his skull, breaking the spell, turning the green salad into a raw piece of flesh.

“My mother knows,” he realized. “My parents know… They know I’m not his son.”

“But you are!” laughed Tooru, incredibly soft. Hajime would like not to love him so much. “They are just confused about the spell. I thought I could recall exactly how you were like while you were alive, but there are some things… like the color of your eyes, or where did you had that beauty mark… Mothers know best!”

“I don’t want this.”

Tooru came closer, smiling miserably like he could understand the pain, the confusion, the horror. His alive hands against his dead cheeks and his lips on his.

“It’s ok, love. Now that you know you don’t have to eat anymore, just when you feel tired.”

“Why would you do this to me?”

Tooru blinked. Was he a witch? A demon? Something else? Maybe that was why he was so perfect.

“Because I love you. Because I couldn’t let you die so young, not when you had so much to offer…”

“Please, kill me. This is no life.”

He backed one step, his hands abandoning his face to take Hajime’s hands. They were so repulsively blue and green and dead against his. He could even _smell_ himself. The putrefaction coming from his body, the rotten parts, the empty guts.

“Sorry, I can’t do that,” he whispered, lowering his gaze. “I stitched your life to mine. You will live until the day I die.”

“And how long…?”

Tooru looked at him.

“You humans cannot understand that amount of time.”

“Then I’ll eat you up.”

The laugh was charming. Tooru closed his eyes, bending forward to kiss him on the lips. Hajime let him do it, his warmth the only thing his dead body could feel without the spell covering it.

“That would be a splendorous end. But not tonight, Hajime. Not tonight.”

Tooru rested his forehead on his, eyes closed. He was right. He wouldn’t eat him that night, because he felt weak, he felt sick, he felt dead. And because he still loved him with a heart no longer beating. But, one day, maybe one day…

Hajime kissed him.

“C’mon, let’s get out of here,” Tooru said. “We’ll come back home, we’ll get a shower and I’ll order some pizza. What do you think?”

“That… sounds nice.”

Tooru smiled.

Hajime did, too.

 


End file.
